A92140:320
A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience tending to resolve doubts moved
A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience tending to resolve doubts moved by Mr. John Goodwin, John Baptist, Dr. Jer. Taylor, the Belgic Arminians, Socinians, and other authors contending for lawless liberty, or licentious toleration of sects and heresies. / By Samuel Rutherfurd professor of divinity in the University of St. Andrews.A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience tending to resolve doubts moved by Mr. John Goodwin, John Baptist, Dr. Jer. Taylor, the Belgick Arminians, Socinians, and other authors contending for lawlesse liberty, or licentious toleration of sects and heresies. / By Samuel Rutherfurd professor of divinity in the University of St. Andrews.
London: printed by R.I. for Andrew Crook, 1649
Chapter 10: Of indulgence in fundamentall, or non-fundamentall errors.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. We wish much an argument to prove bodily violence, or Ecclesiastical co-action may be used against men erring in points fundamental,1 but not in non-fundamentals, since God delivers his mind as clearly in non-fundamentals, if not more clearly, as in fundamentals, and the authority of the Lord who commands faith is as great in non-fundamentals, and our obligation to believe no less, then in the most necessary fundamentals, as therefore abstinence from adultery with Bathsheba, and murdering of Uriah in David, is as necessary, necessitate precepts, as the whole course of Davids repentance and turning to God, yet it is not so necessary, necessitate medii, for David is a saved Saint, though he absta••• not from that adultery and murder, but without conversion from the state of sinful nature to the way of saving grace, it is unpossible David can be saved; so to abstain from Idolatry, and to demolish the high places, and to punish those who resort to them is a godly practice, yet though […] commit Idolatry with the golden Calf, yea and make the people naked also: And Asa, though he demolish not the high places all his reign, nor punish any for that Idolatry, and did persecute the Seer, yet Aaron was the faithful Priest, and the anointed of God, and Asa and some other Kings heart, were perfect before the Lord, though they fell in these sins, nor were these fundamentals, sins in practice, inconsistent with saving faith, more then errors and teaching of errors in non-fundamentals, to the ruin of many souls doth exclude a possibility of being in the state of saving grace, but it cannot follow, that because teaching and publishing of errors in non-fundamentals is consistent with saving grace, that therefore these non-fundamentall sinnes of murder, adultery, tolerating of Idolatrous high places, persecuting of faithful Prophets, making of a golden Calf, and hallowing of it to be adored as the God that brought Israel out of Egypt, are sins not to be tolerated in the truly godly, such as Aaron, David, and Asa, for then should they be tolerated in ⟨p. 125⟩the wicked also, for the toleration of such in the godly, because they are not fundamental wickednesses, inconsistent with saving grace, is as destructive and more, because of their extreme scandalousness, to all peace and safety of human societies, and to the duty of the godly Magistrate, as these same